Delhi High Court: In a petition under Order 39, Rules 1 and 2 of the Civil Procedure Code, 1908, wherein the petitioner, Visage Beauty sought an interim injunction restraining Defendant 1, Freecia Professional from infringing on its trade marks D-TAN, SHINE & GLOW and DERMOMELAN, the Single Judge Bench of Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora, J, granted the injunction and held that the ‘ingredients’ and ‘steps to use’ mentioned on Defendant 1’s products had been substantially copied from the plaintiff’s packaging and therefore amounted to trade mark and copyright infringement.
Background
The plaintiff, Visage, is engaged in the business of beauty and healthcare products and exercises trade mark and copyright rights over the products, ‘O 3+ Bridal Facial Kit Radiant & Glowing Skin’, ‘O 3+ Bridal Facial Kit Vitamin C Glowing skin’ and ‘O 3+ Shine & Glow Kit’ (‘the products’). The plaintiff is also the registered owner of the trade marks DERMOMELAN, D-TAN and SHINE & GLOW.
The plaintiff’s marks had been extensively advertised and promoted in magazines like Femina and Cosmopolitan as well as on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Owing to their extensive advertisement and sale, the plaintiff’s trademarks have acquired substantial goodwill and reputation in the market.
Defendant 1 is also engaged in the business of selling various skin care and cosmetic products under the mark ‘PROADS’ and sells the products ‘Proads Bridal Facial Kit Radiant Smooth Glowing Skin’, ‘Proads Bridal Facial Kit Vitamin C Enriched Glowing Skin’ and ‘Proads Facial Kit Shine & Glowing Skin’ (‘impugned products’).
The plaintiff had contended that the Defendant 1 had infringed on the plaintiff’s trade marks DERMOMELAN, D-TAN and SHINE & GLOW and had verbatim copied the original literary work with respect to the instruction given at the back of the plaintiff’s products including the list of ingredients and the ‘steps to use’.
Per contra, Defendant 1 had contended that the terms ‘Shine & Glow’, ‘Dermomelan’ and ‘D-Tan’ are laudatory and descriptive which were common to the trade and thus could not be used exclusively by the plaintiff. Defendant 1 had also stated in its written statement that the overall get-up, color scheme, layout and packaging of their goods are distinct and dissimilar from that of the plaintiff’s and that the ‘ingredients’ and ‘steps to use’ mentioned on their products are as per industry standards.
Analysis, Law and Decision
The Court considered a comparative chart of the plaintiff and Defendant 1’s products and observed that prima facie Defendant 1 had substantially copied the ‘ingredients’ and ‘steps to use’ from the plaintiff’s products. The Court noted that Defendant 1’s product Proads Bridal Facial Kit Radiant Smooth Glowing Skin’ was an infringing copy of the plaintiff’s corresponding product ‘O 3+ Bridal Facial Kit Radiant & Glowing Skin’.
With respect to the plaintiff’s ‘O 3+ Shine & Glow Kit’, in particular the Dermomelan cream contained in the pack, the Court noted that Dermomelan is neither a word common to the trade nor a product descriptor. Thus, it was evident that Defendant 1 had slavishly copied the plaintiff’s packaging and included it in its ‘steps to use’. The Court opined that since the plaintiff was the registered proprietor of the mark ‘DERMOMELAN’, Defendant 1 was restrained from using it in any manner whatsoever.
With regards to Defendant 1’s product ‘Proads Facial Kit Shine & Glowing Skin’, the Court observed that the usage of the word ‘glowing’ was descriptive and did not infringe upon the plaintiff’s mark ‘SHINE & GLOW’. However, the aforementioned product did substantially copy the ‘ingredients’ and ‘steps to use’ from the plaintiff’s product and were therefore restrained from infringing upon the copyright of the plaintiff in its literary work.
Therefore, the Court restrained Defendant 1 from copying, reproducing, adopting and/or using the plaintiff’s manner of layout on its packaging, description of the ‘ingredients’ and ‘steps to use’ in the products ‘O 3+ Shine & Glow Facial Kit’; ‘O 3+ Bridal Facial Kit Vitamin C Glowing Skin’ and ‘O 3+ Bridal Facial Kit Radiant and Glowing Skin in any other manner whatsoever so as to infringe upon the plaintiff’s copyright.
The Court further restrained Defendant 1 from directly or indirectly dealing in any products/packaging/label bearing the mark ‘DERMOMELAN’ and/or from using any other mark that may be deceptively similar to the plaintiff’s trade mark ‘DERMOMELAN’.
[Visage Beauty and Healthcare Pvt. Ltd. v. Freecia Professional India Pvt. Ltd., C.S.(COMM) No. 633 of 2022, decided on 21-11-2025]
Advocates who appeared in this case:
For the Plaintiff: Vaibhav Vutts, Aamna Hasan, Aarya Deshmukh, Advocates